You have a pair of eyes

The famous Heart Sutra , which summarizes the essence of Mahayana Buddhism and is daily recited in Zen monasteries, having begun by stating that the body is just emptiness, declares that there is no eye, no ear, no nose. Understandably, this bald pronouncement perplexed the young Tung-shan (807-869); and his teacher, who was not a Zenist, also failed to make much of it. The pupil surveyed the teacher carefully, then explored his own face with his fingers. “You have a pair of eyes,” he protested, “and a pair of ears, and the rest; and so have I. Why does the Buddha tell us there are no such things?” His teacher replied: “I can’t help you. You must be trained by a Zen master.” He went off and took this advice. However, his question remained unanswered till, years later, he happened while out walking to look down into a pool of still water. There he discovered those human features the Buddha was talking about - on show where they belonged, where he had always kept them: over there at a distance, leaving this place forever transparent, forever clean of them, as of everything else. This simplest of discoveries - this revelation of the perfectly obvious - turned out to be the essential realization that Tung-shan had been seeking for so long, and it led to his becoming not just a noted Zen master himself, but the founder of Soto, which is today Zen’s largest sect.